Facebook Gets Dragged Into Weinergate

Sometimes, having a higher profile than Twitter has its disadvantages, as Facebook found itself mentioned in a scandal it had absolutely nothing to do with over the weekend that pundits gave the chuckle-inducing name of Weinergate.

Sometimes, having a higher profile than Twitter has its disadvantages, as Facebook found itself mentioned in a scandal it had absolutely nothing to do with over the weekend that went by the chuckle-inducing name of Weinergate.

Weinergate reared its ugly head Saturday, when Big Government reported that a photo of a man’s erection, concealed by underwear, appeared in the official Twitter account of Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.), included in a Tweet directed to Gennette Cordova, a graduate student in Bellingham, Wash.

So what does this have to do with Facebook? Not much, except that Weiner apparently doesn’t know the difference between the U.S.’s largest social network and the 140-character microblogging site, as he replied in a Tweet, “FB hacked.”

Weiner told Politico in an email that he thought it was “obvious” that his account had been hacked, and his spokesman, Dave Arnold, told the New York Post, “Anthony’s accounts on both Facebook and Twitter were hacked.”

Friday evening, I logged onto Twitter to find that I had about one-dozen new mentions in less than an hour, which is a rare occurrence. When I checked one of the posts that I had been tagged in, I saw that it was a picture that had supposedly been Tweeted to me by Weiner. The account that these Tweets were sent from was familiar to me; this person had harassed me many times after the congressman followed me on Twitter a month or so ago. Since I had dealt with this person and his cohorts before, I assumed that the Tweet and the picture were their latest attempts at defaming the congressman and harassing his supporters.

And as for the hacking itself, RedState blogger Caleb Howe Tweeted, “Haven’t seen it mentioned, but wouldn’t have to hack twitter/facebook to post from yfrog. Only have to hack yfrog. It’s authorized to tweet.”

And Photoshop expert Philip Bump went one step further for Mediate, reporting that the photo doesn’t match previous images uploaded by Weiner, that the type of camera is different, and that in his opinion, the photo did not come from Weiner.

Readers, how likely do you think it is that Weiner’s accounts on Facebook and Twitter really got hacked?